The present invention relates to blowers for lawn care, and more particularly relates to a blower apparatus releasably attached to a lawnmower and which has powered direction control of its air outlet. However, the present apparatus is not believed to be limited to only lawnmowers, nor lawn care.
Commercial and residential lawn care providers often use blowers to finish their work, such as to blow grass clippings off driveways, sidewalks, and curbs and into waste areas, and such as to blow leaves and debris into desired areas (or off desired areas). However, blowing requires extra people, time and/or equipment. Notably, the lawn care industry is very competitive, and the above people/time/equipment are not inexpensive. Often equipment is purchased that is good for particular tasks, but that is not flexible enough to do various tasks efficiently and quickly. For example, where a particular blower has a fixed outlet, the air stream may be at a “wrong” height or poor angle for optimal blowing. Further, where a blower is fixedly attached to a particularly large lawnmower, a medium-sized yard that needs “blowing” cleanup but not grass cutting may not justify starting up the large lawnmower only for the simple task of blowing. Also, most equipment is not able to allow multiple tasks to be done at once (such as mowing a lawn and while at the same time also blowing grass clippings)
Haney U.S. Pat. No. 5,746,045 discloses a blower fixedly attached to a lawnmower, where the blower's outlet air stream is directed to spread grass clippings. However, in Haney, the blower's outlet is fixed, such that it is not able to redirect its stream of air in different directions, as is sometimes needed in order to optimally and efficiently do different blower tasks. For example, a direction and height of air flow may be important (and different) when blowing grass clipping off a driveway or over a curb, or when blowing leaves to clean a maximum width strip (i.e., in order to reduce the number of back-and-forth trips required for blowing off a lawn or driveway). Further, Haney's blower is fixed and not easily removable, such that it essentially remains part of the lawnmower. Thus, a blower must be purchased by the lawn care company for each lawnmower where it may be desirable to spread grass clippings coming out of the lawnmower. This adds considerably to the business's capital expense. Also, since it is not efficient to remove a blower from a lawnmower in the field, a separate hand-carried blower must be purchased in order to use the blower without the lawnmower.
It is known to attach a flexible hose to the outlet of a blower, and also to manually redirect the air flow in desired directions. For example, see Yasuda U.S. Pat. No. 3,959,846, Bonvicini U.S. Pat. No. 3,776,459, Kawaguchi U.S. Pat. No. 6,226,833 and Murphy U.S. Pat. No. 7,086,616. However, manual adjustment can be difficult, particularly where the equipment is heavy and/or large enough in size to require considerable effort to move/flex the air flow hose and to bend the air flow hose against a straightening force of the air flowing within it. Further, it is desirable to hold the air flow hose in a selected position without the physical effort of continuing to hold the hose in a selected position. Still further, for stand-on lawnmowers and riding lawnmowers of significant size, it is desirable to have the operator continuously keep both hands on the lawnmower controls . . . and not force the operator to have at least one hand on the air hose repositioning device . . . and further not to distract the operator into continuing to focus on a direction/orientation of the air hose. Removable mounts are known for blowers. For example, see Hafendorder U.S. Pat. No. 7,240,891, Reilly U.S. Pat. No. 4,700,534, Haberlein Publication No. U.S. 2005/0132531, and Green U.S. Pat. No. 4,318,267. However, they require multiple fasteners and time consuming connection/disconnection, and are not as flexible as desired . . . such that they do not allow quick removal and re-mounting to different lawnmowers and support carriers . . . so that one blower can be used on multiple lawn mowing apparatus.